[MPEG-OTSPEC] Removal of the CFF and CF2 from OFF standard (was: Proposal to make OFF complete)

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 4:48 PM Dave Crossland <dcrossland at google.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 6:45 PM Behdad Esfahbod <behdad at behdad.org> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 4:37 PM Dave Crossland <dcrossland at google.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 5:51 PM Behdad Esfahbod <behdad at behdad.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 3:35 PM Levantovsky, Vladimir <
>>>> Vladimir.Levantovsky at monotype.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Wednesday, August 19, 2020 12:40 AM Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Moreover, I suggest CFF and CFF2 be removed from OFF. The
>>>>> claim-to-superiority of CFF format is: 1. better hinting, and 2. better
>>>>> compression. Re better-hinting, the interpretation of CFF hints is NOT
>>>>> specified anywhere. Adobe's code in FreeType is what we have. Re better
>>>>> compression, the existence of CFF in OpenType / OFF is partly why adding
>>>>> quadratic beziers to glyf table has continually not happened.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> In reality, CFF only serves Adobe, who sells their rasterizer to MS /
>>>>> Apple platforms and serves only Adobe. Another example of Adobe abusing the
>>>>> "open" ideology / terminology is the Noto CJK / Adobe-equivalent. It's NOT
>>>>> open-source by any means. The sources are not available. That's something
>>>>> that I pointed out directly to Ken Lunde at one of his Unicode Conference
>>>>> presentations. Adobe is clearly aware of it. And I couldn't fix when I was
>>>>> at Google.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Rip the bandaid. Make open standards truly open.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> With my SC29/WG3 member representative hat on (and _*not*_ serving in
>>>>> my capacity as a chair of this AHG) I object to this proposal. With many
>>>>> thousands of fonts currently deployed, and at least two (or more) different
>>>>> implementations available – this proposal, if considered, would do more
>>>>> harm than good.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Okay let me narrow down the proposal to removing CFF2 only.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I object to the proposal to remove CFF2, because while few CFF2 VF fonts
>>> are available, CFF2 is now widely implemented by font engines
>>>
>>
>> It's in OpenType. I don't see why it needs to be in OFF from a
>> forward-looking point of view.
>>
>
> CFF2 needs to be in OFF because then it is definitively clear of
> rightholder friction, allowing it to be widely adopted.
>

No one has suggested *why* it needs to be widely adopted. You can't just
say "no". I argued that OFF is *incomplete* currently. So either CFF/CFF2
should be removed, *or* it be added as a work item that CFF/CFF2 hinting be
documented as part of OFF.

Separately part of the same proposal was to document script-shaping as part
of OFF; so I expect that to be added as a new work item proposal as well.


> The many users of harfbuzz, that you tout, are doing so because OFF has
> cleared a path for that adoption.
>

I don't see how that argument holds. HarfBuzz implements OpenType & AAT as
dominant font formats. None of it happened because of OFF per se.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.aau.at/pipermail/mpeg-otspec/attachments/20201007/ab249804/attachment.html>